Globalizing Real Estate: The Journey and Vision behind The IMLS with Daniel Nussbaum

The Worlds Times - Logo, Saturday, January 11, 2025 --(The Worlds Times)-- The Journey and Vision behind The IMLS with Daniel Nussbaum

Daniel Nussbaum Interview

In this question-answer session with Daniel Nussbaum, founder of The International MLS [IMLS]®, he shares the journey of building a unified global real estate marketplace. Established in 2010, The IMLS began as a solution to connect real estate agents, brokers, and developers worldwide. It now features over 600,000 property listings across 100+ countries, more than 400,000 members, and empowers their members with innovative tools like International Search and New Home Developments platforms. Daniel highlights key milestones, including transitioning from a commission-based model to a subscription approach and overcoming challenges in creating a scalable, ethical, and globally relevant platform. With a focus on collaboration and cutting-edge technology, The IMLS continues to expand its global reach, offering immense value to both industry professionals and consumers.

Background and Foundation

We started the interview by asking, “Explain your background and your company’s background in detail.”

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “I was born and grew up in Long Beach, NY. I lost my mom when I was 8, then my dad when I was 18. I lived in 17 places in 9 years while putting myself through college and dental school with the help of academic scholarships. It helped that I was President of my High School Honor Society. I finished college undergrad when I was 20 and then attended the University of Pennsylvania School of Dental Medicine, becoming a practicing dentist in Philadelphia for 22 years.

I decided at that point to take on other challenges and moved to California to initially begin a second career as a licensed investment advisor in 1999 and started managing individual portfolios. As I always had an interest in real estate, I decided to also become a licensed California real estate broker in 2005 and created successful local agencies in Los Angeles before becoming fascinated with the idea of creating The International MLS [IMLS]® as an affordable way to bring together agents, brokers, developers, associations, buyers, sellers, and property listings all together into one global marketplace to serve the global real estate industry. I relocated with The IMLS from Los Angeles to Boca Raton, Florida in July 2015, and now located in Delray Beach, Florida.

As to our company—

The company began in 2010 after extensive research of real estate law and how real estate has been conducted globally as well as in the USA. I started an earlier company as a local Los Angeles Broker and then after being contacted by developers to promote their developments in Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama, we agreed to promote their developments.

As a licensed California broker I knew that most buyers typically come from other agents and had to figure out how to get global agents involved. Since most real estate sales are local, I knew that local agents in the USA were not going to be covering their websites with ad units for a development in Mexico or a number of developments outside the USA, so I came up with the idea of making one functional “ad unit’ and had to figure out how I could deliver this in a large quantity to agents all around the world which then became a search of all the developments we could promote.

After we had around 300 developments in 25 countries in early 2011 and started sending out data feeds globally and getting leads, we had a buyer contact us and we sent them to the developer. The buyer didn’t buy from the developer so we lost out, but what we did was start building out a network of quality brokers who could handle the buyers if the buyers wanted a resale. I contacted a broker in Spain who was more than willing to pay a referral fee if we sent her the lead and she then asked me if I would promote her properties. I asked her how many she had, and she said 5100. From there we contacted agencies to participate and grew to more than 150,000 listings in 30 countries.

We then created our International search page that any member could have and capture leads for properties outside their own market and that they could refer to other agents and brokers. This has grown to around 600,000+ listings in 100+ countries now.”

Purpose and Vision

The Worlds Times: Tell us about why you built The IMLS

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “We built The IMLS to bring the entire real estate world together, buyers and sellers as well as all the agents, brokers, developers, associations and MLSs. While the USA and Canada have MLSs where typically the agents share commissions of the buyers and sellers, outside USA and Canada agents work only on a referral system where they are happy to pay a referral fee to a referring agent, but the listing broker is the one who typically shows the property and handles the sale entirely. To illuminate, people in the UK who wish to buy a property in Italy, France, Spain, UAE, etc. are not getting a local agent in the UK to drive and show these properties, and they are typically not familiar with how sales are actually handled outside their own country.

We also wanted to build out The IMLS with the right ethical solutions. In the old days, a listing agent would put out a For Sale sign on the lawn after getting the listing. Everyone who drove by knew who the listing agent was. We wanted to build out The IMLS with the same mentality so that when a potential buyer sees your listing, there is no advertising of other agents on your own listing page.”

Goals and Objectives

The Worlds Times: What are the goals and objectives of The IMLS?

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “To bring together all the listings and real estate professionals into one global marketplace and make this a successful company for our shareholders as well.”

Strengths and Achievements

The Worlds Times: What do you feel are the biggest strengths of “The IMLS” right now?

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “I would have to say our tech solutions including our International new home developments search tool that comes free with every membership that empowers our members to promote the developments, our International search tool with resales and rental listings, along with our Brand having two trademarks approved by the US Patent and Trademark Office which we are leveraging to help brokers and agents around the world to attract more listing appointments and more listings, as well as more agents.”

Key Transformations

The Worlds Times: What were the changes you took to get to where you are today? And what one word describes you the best.

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “Probably our biggest change from the beginning was changing from a “free to list-commission share” model to a membership subscription one.

The one word to describe me? From me…it’s “tenacious.” From others…it’s “different.”

Challenges and Solutions

The Worlds Times: What have been the biggest challenges you’ve had to overcome during the journey of your leadership?

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “Without question, the largest challenge has been creating everything and working hard on developing it all and making it fit for every aspect of the industry, while also needing to attract sufficient capital to build everything out to our full vision.

Another challenge we have faced so far is getting the word to all of the agents and brokers who belong to MLSs and associations that their association or MLS can provide IMLS memberships for all of their members at a nominal cost of only $1-$2.50/member/year depending on the size of the organization. If MLSs and Associations choose to participate with The IMLS, their members receive unlimited property listings on The IMLS, get listings in the Agent/Broker Directory for every city they service, gain access to their own International New Home Development search for their website, as well as gain access to IMLS product options at a discount.”

Misconceptions

The Worlds Times: What have been the biggest misconceptions you’ve had to overcome?

Daniel Nussbaum replied,“I can think of three pretty quickly. The first one is that we were thought of initially as only being for agents and brokers who handle international sales. We worked on our messaging to let everyone know that we are really “For Luxury and Global Agents & Those That Want To Be.”

The second one was that The IMLS was only for agents with listings. Truth is, we have created products and advertising opportunities for agents without listings, whether to help them get listings or to benefit from our lead generation tools to help them get clients to refer to other agents.

The third misconception has been that the USA MLSs might see us as competition. Nothing could be further than the truth. We see ourselves as partners with our Member Benefit Plan which can be very beneficial for their members as well as save their members the cost of basic memberships. We see The IMLS as enhancing their own basic membership opportunity.

Unique Opportunities

The Worlds Times: Which are the opportunities that you created that excites you the most?

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “One would have to be our International New Homes Developer/Agent platform which was created to bring together our global agents and brokers with an opportunity to promote new home developments around the world and earn commissions or referral income simply from an automated lead generation tool. This provides our 400,000+ members with an opportunity to take our International new homes search which provides all of the developments we get in an unbranded solution so that their customers cannot see the name or contact information about the development or the developer.

All the international leads generated from the agents go to one agency we are working with who will handle the sales process for the agents as well as the buyers and developers and this enables all of our members to earn commissions or referral income simply by generating the customer lead. For the developers, this is a way to tap into an enormous sales network while only needing to work with a single point of contact for all of the agents.

The other opportunity that really excites me is our recently launched “The International MLS [IMLS]® Global Luxury Companies of the World” network. This new opportunity leverages our residential, commercial, and developer platforms with many of the products we have created and provides special opportunities for brokers. We recently did this PR release which explains this in more detail.”

Core Values

The Worlds Times: What do you value the most about “The IMLS” vision?

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “I really value the input of our team which has had the faith and worked really hard to keep everything moving in a positive direction and which is now leading us towards greater growth and investor interest.”

The Worlds Times: What are the key values which helped you to overcome the challenges in your path? Tell us something about your memorable incident in your leadership?

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “There are always challenges in a path or journey such as this. For myself in creating this, it also been like trying to solve one long algebraic equation of concepts so that everything and all types of deliveries work well with each other. There have also been incidents whereby investors, prospective investors, brokers or institutional CEOs had ethical issues surface that really shocked me.”

Future Vision

The Worlds Times: How do you see the “The IMLS” changing in two years, and how do you see yourself creating that change?

Daniel Nussbaum replied, “I see really great growth ahead and see us expanding our reach much more on an international level utilizing both our Brand as well as our technology deliveries. As for me enabling that growth, I feel that all of the pieces are now created including all of our feeds automation platforms so that it is now all about creating strategic partnerships for our international growth. On the tech side, for listings whether from USA residential resales in RESO format, to developer or international xml feeds, or agent roster feeds, everything is automated and USA MLSs and Associations can have their members enter their own IMLS member area by just clicking on our logo on the MLS/Association dashboard.”

Competitive Advantages

Lastly we asked, “What benefits are people getting from “The IMLS” in this competitive world?”

“For the industry, greater exposure for their property listings as well as growing their own businesses with our products. For consumers, the ability to search properties in 100+ countries as well as International new home developments.” Daniel Nussbaum Concluded

About The International MLS [IMLS]®

The International MLS [IMLS]® is a real estate technology company and a global portal and products platform serving agents, brokers, associations, developers, buyers and sellers around the world. Based in Delray Beach Florida, The IMLS has listings in 100+ countries available in 100+ languages and The IMLS enables agents to have all listings for their own websites. The IMLS empowers all agents and brokers to display international property listings knowing that commissions can be made on any sale which is generated by their IMLS search through referral agreements with other agents around the world and now has 400,000+ members. More information about The International MLS [IMLS]® and all its services can be found on TheIMLS.com.